


Starting over again

by ferggirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, background Sara/Oliver/Diggle, set in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:43:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6209401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow up to my story "One Night Stand." </p><p>“Oliver and Sara know more about this Lazarus pit,” Felicity says slowly, “but you’re giving me no red flags.”<br/>Tommy shoots her an incredulous look. “Just because I held it together last night -”<br/>“Beautifully, I might add.”<br/>“- er, yes, thank you. I don’t know how this works. I don’t feel like killing anyone.” He sinks morosely into the hotel chair and stares at his own hands. “Not yet, at least.”<br/>There’s a crash as Diggle kicks the door down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starting over again

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [One night stand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1488412) by [ferggirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl). 



> Really suggest you read "One Night Stand" first. This is a direct follow to that, prompted by an ask for a graphic on "what happened after" and my own inability to let a thing go. I fully admit to not seeing every plot thread through and sticking to the heart of the Tommy/Felicity story.
> 
> Graphic is here: http://notababoonbrandishingastick.tumblr.com/post/140783300955/from-storiesofimagination-who-i-still-cant

When she gets down to breakfast he isn’t there. Sure, Felicity may have washed her hair twice (that was a lot of sex, ok?) and taken her time getting clean but she didn’t expect Tommy to vanish in the meantime. There isn’t exactly anywhere for him to go.

Oliver can’t quite meet her eyes when she asks. “He said he needed space.”

Sara is more direct. “He was in the pit, Felicity, we don’t know what that did to him. We all have to keep our expectations low.”

“Great, yes, low expectations,” Felicity crunches her second piece of toast, “but why is no one with him? If we’re worried about the Lazarus Pit implications, it does seem like we should be keeping an eye…” The table is conspicuously silent, and she trails off. “You locked him in his room?”

Diggle sighs and nods.

“Well tell me you at least gave him some food first? He certainly earned breakfast last night,” she snaps, forgetting to blush in her anger.

Diggle has the grace to look mildly ashamed. Oliver and Sara both just look stoic. Felicity pushes back from the table, toast forgotten. She loads up a plate in furious silence and then turns and holds it out to Oliver for approval. He removes the sausage links and the cantaloupe slices, then nods.

“Come and get us when it’s time to leave.” Felicity can see that all three are considering coming with her, so she sends her most vicious _do not follow me_ glare as she heads for the door. They stay put.

She has to knock twice before she hears Tommy shuffle to the door. His footsteps stop, just on the other side, and she stares expectantly at the peephole. His sigh is loud and full of feeling.

“I’d love to let you in, Felicity, but I’m no longer in control of the lock.”

“Oh, I know that. I just wanted to make sure you were ok with me joining you. One sec.” She shifts the hot plate of food to her other hand and pulls out her phone. The jammer on Tommy’s door takes about 2 seconds to flash a welcome green sign under the assault of her latest app. “Ok, you should be clear.”

He swings the door open just as the jammer starts smoking. “Food and a fire. Are you ever boring?”

She shoves the plate at him and uses her shoe to knock the cover off the jammer. “I keep telling them we need to invest in good equipment. Ugh, look it’s totally fried.”

Tommy’s got a mouth full of hashbrowns but he nods. The jammer is still smoking. “Ideas?”

“Three. Only one my mother would approve.” She pokes at it, but the smoke continues to leak out.

“Let’s go with Mom’s version,” he says, crunching some bacon. “You’ve got your head on pretty straight, so I figure she’s got good instincts.”

Felicity snorts, and puts one hand to his chest, shoving him back into the room. He moves, surprised, and manages to keep his food on his plate. The door swings shut behind her.

“You haven’t met my mother,” she says with a smile.

“Isn’t it still on fire?” His eyes are flicking from her to the door in confusion.

“Yep.”

“Are we not concerned about this?”

“Not really. It’s not big enough to do more than smolder, and by the time it sets off alarms one of the three vigilantes downstairs will have come to see if I’m still alive and dealt with it. Plus, hotel doors are fireproof, so we won’t even have to smell it. Much.”

He sinks down onto the bed, bemused. “Ok then.”

There’s silence as he works his way through the rest of the food, then puts the plate to the side. Felicity leans against the wall and tries not to fidget. If she were really following Mom’s orders, there’d be a lot more kissing. Which Felicity would not object to at all, not really, just...

“I’m starting to worry that I did not, in fact, blow your mind last night,” she says, watching his expression darken as he drifts in thought. “You should be way more cheerful.”

His smile is sharp-edged when he looks up. “Just contemplating the mysteries of rising from the dead.”

“Oh yeah, there is that. And somehow the League of Assassins had you, and then dumped you with us.” She scowls. “Really, that creepy lady could have monologued a bit more, we have so little to go on.”

There’s some muffled cursing from the other side of the door. Diggle. She almost regrets leaving him the almost-fire to deal with.

“Oliver and Sara both seem pretty sure that - that something bad will happen.” He’s up and pacing now. “If I’m not careful, or locked up, or whatever.”

“Oliver and Sara know more about this Lazarus pit,” Felicity says slowly, “but you’re giving me no red flags.”

Tommy shoots her an incredulous look. “Just because I held it together last night -”

“Beautifully, I might add.”

“- er, yes, thank you. I don’t know how this works. I don’t feel like killing anyone.” He sinks morosely into the hotel chair and stares at his own hands. “Not yet, at least.”

There’s a crash as Diggle kicks the door down. Felicity ducks further into the room to escape the fallout. The acrid smell of smoke has them all coughing.

“A fire? Really, Felicity? We’re supposed to be low-profile.” Diggle says her name, but his glare is all for Tommy. “Let’s go you two, our ride is here.”

She starts for the door, but Tommy doesn’t. Both she and John turn to stare at him.

“Look, I’m sorry about locking you in the room.” Diggle grimaces. “But we gotta go, man. The League is in town.”

If anything, Tommy settles back into his chair. Felicity groans and hurries over.

“I am getting the feeling that you’ve come to some inexplicably noble decision,” she mutters, crouching in front of him. “Can you maybe not do that?”

His smile is grim. “There are too many questions. They’re the only ones who will know for sure. What happened to me. What is happening.”

“Yes, but please also consider, the last time you were in their hands you wound up drugged and abandoned.”

“With my once best friend and his team? Felicity, even I know that could have been so much more sinister. I need to find out what’s going on here. How my father’s involved.”

Diggle clears his throat and Felicity goes on her toes to capture Tommy’s lips with her own. It’s a quick hard kiss, a warning and a promise. The she’s shoving things into his hands. “Fine. But be safe, please. And text me if you need help. And wait for them in my room away from all this smoke, it’s bad for you.”

He takes her key and her phone number and leans his forehead on hers for a moment. “Get out of here.”

She goes.

******

It doesn’t take them long to find him.

That’s the first thing that worries Tommy. Not every underworld organization can have someone like Felicity Smoak, hacker and people-locater extraordinaire. Which means that the crawling sensation under his skin is probably a much more invasive way of tracking him down.

He couldn’t have gone with them, not if he was going to bring the entirety of the League with him.

The second thing that worries him is the whispers curling in the back of his mind, hissing and tugging him toward dark corners he walked away from years ago. He still doesn't want to hurt anyone, and it's not like he's hearing voices. Just…a pull. An edge he doesn't want.

He sits facing the hallway, face flat and heart pounding. The room still has the smell of Felicity’s shampoo and it helps him breathe as the door swings open.

It’s not his father who walks in. _That’s something._

“Well, take me to your leader, I guess.” Tommy holds out his hands and watches the scowls on the three assassins’ faces deepen. “Not that I’d be following him if I were you. I’ve got a lifetime of experience, guys. Malcolm Merlyn is only out for himself.”

One of them raises a hand, and the last thing Tommy hears before he blacks out is the whistle of a dart flying through the air to stab his chest.

_Good start._

******

The drive back to Starling City is quiet. Oliver is angry that Diggle and Felicity didn’t call for help to remove Tommy, Sara is alert for tails, John’s napping so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone.

Felicity spends most of it staring at her phone.

Her phone that is conspicuously silent.

So Tommy’s probably dead, then. Right? Well, either that or the League didn’t give him a chance to go get a pay-as-you-go phone from the gift shop before they hauled him away to their chains and torture pits.

She sighs and stares out the window as the air gets drier and warmer and the sun goes down.

They drop her off at her apartment first. Oliver recovers enough to stammer, “Listen, I just - no matter what happened, thank you. For coming. All of you.”

Felicity nods. John sighs. Sara smiles with that sad, knowing edge that always has Oliver reaching to touch her, to remind her that she’s here now, not alone. They drive away and Felicity heads upstairs, turns on all the lights and just _remembers._

It had been weird and unfair, but it was damn good sex. And that kiss in the hallway was worth remembering.

Her phone doesn’t buzz all night.

It doesn’t buzz for two long weeks. Two weeks of useless chemistry experiments on their blood samples. Two weeks of wishing she’d thought to get some of Tommy’s blood before she left him sitting in that hotel room. Of watching the three warriors spar in less and less clothing, watching them grin as they pin each other to the mats and linger, slower and slower to get up. Oliver and Sara have always flirted as they fought, but there’s a newness to this energy, a shamelessness that John’s a part of now.

Felicity watches - of course she does - chewing on the end of her pen and wondering if she’d be out there if it wasn’t for Tommy. If they hadn’t sent her out of the room that night. She watches and wonders if she wants to be out there. She does a fair amount of wincing, too, since most of the heated looks come after a bone-rattling slam to the floor.

But she doesn’t dig out her sports bra. Instead she checks her phone and does deep internet scans for any League activity.

Sara sidles over after a training session, both of them watching John and Oliver’s arms brush as they head for the showers.

“You’re quiet.” Sara takes a drag from her water bottle and stares at Felicity pointedly. “You’re never quiet. What’s wrong.”

It’s there on the tip of her tongue - the ask to be included, the need - but Felicity just sighs and looks at her phone.

“It’s been two weeks. I’m worried about him.”

“We all are, Felicity. Why do you think all of that,” she gestures to the changing area, which has a bit of steam leaking out the door, “is happening?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” Felicity snaps. Sara looks surprised.

“Ok, I know you don’t actually want in on the group… thing,” she says after a minute. “I’ve been watching, just in case. You aren’t blushing as much. You drift off, don’t pay attention.”

Now Felicity’s blushing. “Oh, I’m not sure I’d say - that is, you’re right but it’s not - oh, there is no good way to have this conversation.”

The grin on Sara’s face is pure sex. “Noted and revising my last statement, Smoak. But I still say it’s not option #1 in your book.”

“Right. Well. But what about your sister? I mean, Tommy and Laurel - before… everything. I was a necessary pairing on a messy night, nothing more, right?” It comes out at a whisper, and her hands knot together as Sara processes.

“Laurel - she’s buried him. It’s going to be hard, if he ever does come back. But she’s happy, she’s finally happy and I don’t know that she could have found that with any of this old history hanging over her.” Sara sits on the edge of the desk. “I know Laurel. But I didn’t know Tommy. And I don’t know where his head is now.”

Oliver comes out of the changing room in a towel, flushed and still wet from his shower. He leans over and whispers something in Sara’s ear that has that sex-eating grin on her face again.

“To be continued, yeah? Duty calls.”

Oliver lingers, watching her prowl toward the back of the lair. “Felicity, you ok?”

Her three best friends are doing exciting and sweaty things in the shared bathroom and not inviting her and the person she wants to do exciting and sweaty things with is hanging out with a bunch of evil assassins on purpose and still hasn’t texted her.

Felicity drops her phone into her purse.

“Yeah, fine. But I might head home. Have a good night. Don’t touch my stuff with your - just don’t touch my stuff.”

He raises an eyebrow, but lets her go.

Her dreams are all kind of kinky that night, and she wakes up tangled in her sheets and desperately needy. But when she slides her hand down to finish what her dreams started, she’s only got one dark head and two blue eyes in mind.

She remembers vividly how his fingers danced over her skin, how his tongue followed. She comes hard and fast with his name on her lips and tries not to worry.

******

Tommy comes to on a ranch, of all things. Not in Bangkok or Nanda Parbat or any of the other far-off places he's come to associate with the League.

No, he's pretty sure this is a ranch in America. With cows.

It's an absurd backdrop for assassins with bows and arrows and masks over their faces. Tommy takes a few hits because he can't quite keep a straight face when his guards argue over honor as they steer him around cow patties.

He doesn't see his father for a week. The whispers are still there, still nudging his thoughts to dark places. He wakes up each morning and has to actively think of happiness: Oliver, Laurel, Thea on a sailboat as he steers at 18, his mother’s smile, his 12th birthday surprise party at the Queen house. When he's not on his guard the pain and blood seep in. His mother weeping as she died. His father walking away and never really coming back for him. Oliver and Laurel in a window, wrapped around each other, still unable to escape the other’s gravity after all these years.

In those moments, he pulls out the keycard Felicity scratched her phone number into and runs his thumb over the ridges and grooves until the memory fades. He's long since memorized the number, but it helps to touch it and remember her face, her voice.

_Be safe, please._

It's nice to know that one person out there believes he's still… him. It's steadying. Half the time he doesn't even get distracted with remembering how she'd looked that night, amped up and frustrated and so very sexy and a little scared, but not of him.

The day his father finally calls for him, he slips the keycard beneath the bookshelf in the corner of his small room. It's not something he wants to share, this new feeling. Malcolm will see a weakness and exploit it.

His father is in his ridiculous black leather getup. No cowboy boots in sight, but the walls are dotted with stuffed dead animals. They give Tommy the shivers and his thumb moves, searching for the sense memory of his plastic token.

The smile on his father’s face is questioning, searching even. He's looking for something before either one of them speaks. Tommy’s whispers feel like the roar of a flooded river.

“Son.” Malcolm takes a step forward and Tommy forces himself not to flinch. “I've waited a long time for this day.”

“Which day is that?” His head is swimming with rage, old and new, and he bites his words out with faltering control. “The one where you could undo how dead I was after your manmade earthquake? That happened weeks ago. So you must mean the one where you drugged me and dumped me with my drugged friends. Except that already happened too. It's not the day you ‘rescue’ me from them, it's not Taco Tuesday or apparently casual Friday either.”

Malcolm's face closes down. It's a look Tommy has seen his entire life. It says _How did I get stuck with this asshole as my kid?_ and even after dying, it still hurts.

“What, no grand speech? No promise that we can rule the underworld together if I will just kill everyone I've ever loved?” He's spiraling, Tommy can feel it, but he's got nothing to grab onto and his father is just standing there looking at him - his freshly revived dead son - with disappointment etched on his face. “Aren't you even going to try?”

“Clearly you have no interest in hearing me out,” Malcolm snaps. “I have better things to do. We’ll talk later.”

He waves and the guards slink silently through the door. Tommy resists for a moment, rage freezing him in place, and then the smaller woman presses a point on the back of his neck and he goes down hard.

He's immobile but conscious as they carry him out, so when his father starts yelling he can hear it.

“Get her on the phone _NOW._ His mind should be mine by now! I want answers. If that business with the drug ruined… ”

A door slams and they're outside, crossing to the hut where he is kept. They toss him at his pallet on the floor and lock him in the dark. Tommy counts back from 50 before he dives for the bookcase and feels in the dust for his lifeline.

He holds it while he sleeps, his fingers curled around the edges of the hard plastic with enough pressure to leave a dent in his skin. His dreams that night are of blond hair and sharp eyes glazed over with need. He wakes rock hard and lonely, but smiling.

Later that day it occurs to him that he didn’t feel the pull once while he was imagining himself and Felicity naked. So he gives himself permission to do that more.

Days pass. His father prods and pushes, pretends concern and then allows the guards to beat on him. Always, Tommy can feel Malcolm watching. Waiting for something to take over.

_His mind should be mine by now._

Tommy came for answers and he knows he got most of them that first day. Just not the one he needs.

Why has he been brought back? Something about the Lazarus pit has Malcolm expecting his reborn son to bend to his will.

Is he a danger to anyone? Not yet. But the rage and the dark whispers intensify with each sparring match.

The pull is worst when his father is in the room. Back in his locked room, it's a suggestion, a few stray thoughts that can be brushed aside with happier memories or sexy daydreams. But near his father the anger becomes the only thing he can hear, and all of his instincts tell him that his dear old dad has gone full dark side on his Jedi ass. It's in no way reassuring to realize he's the spawn of Starling City’s own Palpatine with a smirk and a bow. 

Still, at least his asshole dad doesn't have force lightning.

Can it be stopped? That’s the question that he turns over and over in his head. Felicity had been furious at the implication that there was something wrong with him - but he’s not sure anymore. If his father can find the switch he’s looking for…

He’s going to need help.

There are normal people on the ranch. He sees them occasionally, feeding animals and leaving large distances between themselves and anyone in leather. Still, it takes him a few days to realize that they don’t just have buckets and cowboy boots.

They have _cell phones_.

He’s pretty sure he won’t hurt anyone, so the next time his father calls him in, he makes a point of wanting to go back to his room. He even slips in a line about how he’s safe there. Predictably, Malcolm flips.

“He can sit in horse shit for all I care, you will tear that place apart and tell me why it is not working,” his father snarls over his own cell phone. Ten minutes later, and Tommy’s tied to a hitching post, casually wiping dung off his destroyed shoes and wondering how impressive his beard is at the two week point.

He’s never grown this much facial hair before.

He makes enough of a racket to piss off the horses, which pisses off the farmhands, which pisses off the assassins. It’s one big, loud pissing contest and he’s hanging out in the middle, still attached to a post. But he takes advantage of the confusion to swipe the phone out of a big rancher dude’s back pocket and stuff it down the front of his pants.

An hour later, he’s bruised and back in his little room. They’ve pulled out all of the furniture. It’s just him and a pallet. He waits until the ranch quiets around him, and digs the phone out of his jeans. He feels a little bad when the lock screen shows big rancher with a pair of giggling kids.

“Hell, that’s what the cloud is for, buddy.” Still, Tommy checks that the guy’s photos are backed up before he sends the text.

******

A few hours of satisfied, dreamless sleep later, Felicity jolts awake again. It takes a moment for her to place the sound.

It’s a text.

She scrambles for her phone, worried about her team. But it’s not Oliver, Diggle, or Sara.

_PRIVATE NUMBER (2:02 am): Ok. In Montana? can’t stop thinking of you_

_PRIVATE NUMBER (2:03 am): MM expected me to wake up a happy soldier. creepy. trying to figure out why_

_PRIVATE NUMBER (2:03 am): Don’t answer, I’m destroying the SIM now_

It takes her a day to trace the ping to a rural cell tower. She points several old, hackable satellites in that direction, and runs concurrent algorithms to look for recent building or activity that looks suspicious. She narrows it down to a ranch outside a podunk town.

Sara and Oliver come home battered and bruised that night, Diggle has to bail them out of a fight with a dead man by killing him again.

“Head shot.” John says shortly when Felicity demands to know how they had this much blood on them if it isn’t theirs. The body is in the corner under a sheet.

Sara looks long at her before speaking up. “It was the Pit, he came back vicious. I knew him, he’d never have attacked us, not before.”

Felicity sends them all home to sleep it off, and doesn’t comment when they pile into the same car. Then she carefully washes out the vials of their team blood samples and fills them with a dead man’s.

 _The Lazarus Pit_. She has formed the words on her lips so many times, but there’s a look that comes over Sara’s face, a deadness in Oliver’s eyes when they talk about it.

Felicity doesn’t sleep that night. Instead she blackmails an MIT classmate into letting her use his lab’s centrifuge and hacks into old medical records for their previously deceased John Doe.

She’s not sure what she’s looking for - she’s an engineer, not a doctor, Jim! - but once she has the old test results to compare to, even she can spot the protein spike, the elevated white blood cells, the mysterious chemical compound.

His blood is a mess. Felicity decides to fix it.

It takes a week. The first three attempts kill all cells and she wears gloves to dispose of them in a vat of acid. The next four barely make a dent. She’s reached 10 variations of her serum when she drops 2 ml into the second-to-last vial of the resurrected villain’s blood and for the first time the sample tests clean.

No protein spike. No weird chemicals. No sudden shriveling death. The white blood cells would just be a reaction to a problem, so they don’t change, but Felicity knows enough to know it’s a win.

She mixes 15 vials of electric blue Serum #10. Then she bites her lip and checks her satellites again.

The League is gone. Montana is quiet.

The next message comes two days later, when she’s in the shower. She has taken to carrying her phone with her at all times, just in case, but she still can’t justify exposing it to her clumsiness and water. The loud buzz alerts her and she dives out, grabbing her towel and thumbing through to the text.

 _PRIVATE NUMBER (6:45 pm):_ _I’m ok. Haven’t wanted to kill anyone yet. Not sure where I am. New place. Cold. MM already getting tired of me._

_PRIVATE NUMBER (6:45 pm): ...typing…_

She hurries to answer before he can tell her he’s ditching the phone. All those years of thumb exercise and she’s lightening fast.

_FELICITY (6:46 pm): Don’t you dare throw this phone away. I think I have something. A serum. I’ll come find you._

_PRIVATE NUMBER (6:48 pm): really? ah hell_

_PRIVATE NUMBER (6:48 pm): don’t come here. loud, murderous, masked assholes_

_PRIVATE NUMBER (6:49 pm): that’s just my dad, league’s here too_

_FELICITY (6:49 pm): Coming unless you have a better plan._

_FELICITY (6:50 pm): I’m smarter than you so that’s doubtful._

She waits a minute and then her phone jumps in her hand. It’s _ringing_. “H-hello?”

“You type way too fast, figured this would be easier. Is it raining there?”

Felicity yelps and scrambles to turn off the shower before she floods her bathroom. “No, nope. Just caught me in the middle of - well, anyway. Uh. How are things?”

“Oh my god, you’re naked aren’t you?” She can hear the laugh in his voice. Mindless Lazarus pit killers wouldn’t have laughing voices, would they? “Even back from the dead I still, apparently, have excellent timing.”

Something warm and happy curls inside her at the appreciation in his tone. “Are you hitting on me so I won’t come save you?”

“Absolutely not. I am hitting on you so that when you do eventually save me you are prepared for me to be properly grateful.”

He gives her the entire story in rushed whispers: the dark thoughts, the reaction to his father, Malcolm’s rage that his mind is still his own. Felicity responds with several death threats and promises to trace the call the second they hang up. Tommy convinces her to wait three days.

“I have one last idea, and I really don’t want any of you running into this hornet’s nest.” His voice deepens with a smile she can hear. “Especially not you, not until you put some clothes on at least.”

Felicity is pretty sure she blushes head to toe. “Fuck off, Merlyn.”

“Oh, Smoak, you have no idea.”

He says he can hang onto this phone, if he’s careful. Before they hang up, he asks if she’d send him a picture.

“I am not sexting an unsecured number -” she starts, only for him to jump in with a rush of words, all embarrassed honesty.

“Oh, god, of course you’d think I - I meant of your _face_ , Felicity. I just - it’d be nice to see your face. It’s a nice face.”

She wipes her hand through the condensation and stares at herself in the cloudy mirror. She’s half-dry, a little wild-eyed, a lot unsure. She sends it before she can overthink.

******

Tommy reluctantly disables the GPS on the phone, because he doesn’t quite trust Felicity to wait a full three days, and because he desperately wants to keep her far, far away from his father’s band of murderous assholes.

They got to whatever snowy wasteland they currently inhabit (the stolen phone claimed he was in Fort something or other, Canada, not that that helps) by prop plane, and he hasn’t been this cold since Oliver locked him out of the sauna one New Year’s and left him naked in the snow for 10 minutes.

Malcolm is running out of ideas to force his compliance, and mostly just has the assassins take turns roughing him up. In order to figure out the _why_ in his parent’s twisted resurrection bid, Tommy is going to have to pretend that it’s finally worked. It's the only way he’ll find out what Malcolm wants him to do.

As long as Felicity gives him a chance to play it out.

Still, he can’t regret the call or the embarrassing begging for a photo. He has to bite his lip to hide the grin that wants to dance across his face at the worst times for the rest of the day. Hell, he doesn’t even need the keycard that night to ward off the shadows in his mind.

When he's dragged in to see Malcolm the next day, he's ready.

“Must we continue testing technique on you, son? Why resist what your mind desires so fiercely?”

Tommy swallows down the sour taste at the back of his throat. Then he gives his best sycophant smile. “You're right, Father. I was a fool to fight destiny.”

Malcolm’s eyes shine with gleeful madness, and Tommy knows he has him.

******

It's three excruciatingly long days for Felicity until he contacts her again. She nearly confesses each evening, but the team is so wrapped up in each other that she winds up going home and organizing her closet instead, hoping Tommy is still breathing.

At 35 hours and 42 minutes after they last spoke (she has a timer running), her phone buzzes. It’s a multimedia message - a photo. He’s got tired eyes and a beard and she’s never seen his hair so mussed.

She’s so distracted by his face that it takes her an extra six seconds to realize he’s _on a plane_.

_FELICITY (6:32 pm): WTF. Call me._

Her phone rings about 20 seconds later. She doesn’t wait for a hello.

“Listen, I know you think you need answers. But this isn’t the way to do it. You can’t trust Malcolm - you know you can’t. And the League will just use you. Don’t you dare go anywhere with them. If you stay put we can come and get you -”

She pauses for breath and he breaks in. “Whoa there, tiger. It’s ok.”

“You are on a _plane_ , Tommy.”

“Yep.” There’s a pause and she catches up to the smile in his voice.

“A… a not evil plane?”

“A very normal, commercial flight to Edmonton from... nowhere Alberta.”

“Canada? Again?” Felicity huffs and re-aims her satellites with a few keystrokes and a short apology to the NSA. “And they seem so nice up there.”

“All the open space, maybe?” His voice drops as she hears the flight attendant move by. “It was the most I could talk myself onto without actual government issued ID. Any real airport is going to arrest me. I don’t suppose you have any way to-”

“Oh.” She blinks. “I keep three passports on hand for everyone just in case - I never did get rid of yours. Do you want to be Harry, Joe, or - huh, I left this one as Tommy Arthur.”

He groans. “Puns. You made history puns on my fake ID?”

“I offered you Harry or Joe.” His silence is loud. “Mr. Arthur it is, then. When do you land?”

She contemplates pulling in favors or borrowing a corporate jet. But in the end she books herself a ticket on the first commercial flight from Starling City to Edmonton. She finds him dozing at a bench next to the baggage claim, in all his flannel and bearded glory.

“You sure you don’t want to stay Canadian?” She sinks down and watches him jerk awake. No hands reaching for her neck, no wild angry eyes. That's good. “It looks… cozy… on you.”

His eyes smile, and he reaches out an arm. She dives into the hug, feeling his chest rumble when he answers. “Cozy? I’m crushed.”

“Mmmm, you shouldn’t be. It’s a good thing.”

He tucks her head under his chin and she can feel his exhale shudder through him. “It’s really good to see you.”

She squeezes, but is already going through her mental list. “Right, do we need to serum you up here or are you good for the flight home?”

“I’m good.” He says it quietly, seriously. She nods and moves on.

Felicity produces two Edmonton-Starling City tickets and they head for security. She keeps a hand in his, not quite ready to relinquish her hold on him after three long weeks of worry. He takes the small carry-on, raising an eyebrow at the weight.

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you’d be stable, so I brought some with me. If they ask, you’re diabetic.”

“Ah.”

They settle into their seats on the plane and Felicity waits all of two minutes before she flips up the armrest and curls into his side. He’s looking out the window, and jerks in surprise. She pulls back, stammering.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just - it’s dumb, I shouldn’t assume-”

His smile is small but genuine, and he opens his arm in invitation again. “I’ve got a few new bruises, that’s all. You did say you liked the flannel. Cozy up, Smoak.”

******

They’re somewhere over the Rockies when he feels her wake up. He’s not surprised when she starts whispering questions.

“So how did you get away? Was it an escape? Are they coming after you?”

He eyes her from where he’s been dozing, and slides his fingers through the hair that’s fallen out of her braid. “I told my father he’d won.”

She looks baffled, and he grimaces and shifts in his seat. “He kept expecting me to walk in and be someone else, someone who wants to be his son and heir to all this… evil. So after I got off the phone with you, I did just that.”

“Oh my god, that's brilliant. And dangerous.” She tries to scowl, but adorably can't hold it. “Did he monologue? Did he spill everything?”

Tommy’s mouth quirks up. “You have been hanging out with Oliver for way too long.”

Felicity grins dangerously. “He’s been hanging out with _me_.”

“Mmm, noted. Yes, he monologued. He has a mission for me, the whole reason I was reborn, in fact.”

Her body tenses. “Oh. How bad is it?”

He stares out the window for a few beats, and she slips her hand into his. The soft pressure is a warm anchor in reality. Tommy takes a deep breath and just tells her.

“Kill orders for most of you, which is absurd. I’m not even trained. He just figured I’d have access. Told me to use a gun. And then he let me walk out the door.”

For the first time she looks concerned. “That’s too easy. I need to scan you for trackers. And we should make sure we don’t have an assassin tail.”

He watches the sun setting over the horizon and sighs. “Happy to do both, but I know my father. This is his idea of a test. If I do this, I’m the son he’s always wanted. If I die, he's out nothing he hadn't already lost. He’s not going to help me - and that’s what sending backup would mean to him.”

“What is it with fathers and… and stupidity?” There’s a vicious break in her voice, a painful story behind her anger, and he files it away for another time. Right now, he just kisses her nose.

“In my case it buys us time. For your serum and my escape and a warning to the others.”

“Doesn’t make him less of an evil asshole.”

“No, it does not do that.”

It's not much longer until they're coasting onto the runway in Starling, the sun already gone behind the trees. Tommy can't quite believe it was that easy. That he's safe and no one else got hurt in the process - at least not yet. The fasten seatbelt sign flickers off and Felicity absently pulls out her phone. Just like that, panic sets in and Tommy forgets how to breathe.

It's one thing if it's just her. She sees _him_ , she doesn't see a ghost. But Oliver...

Her hand on his wrist brings him back. She's clearly guessed, and hurries to reassure him. “You're not ready to see...? I can wait. It's just, they're all worried, you know. Well, they are when they're not acting out by having ridiculous amounts of group sex in semi-public settings.”

For a moment, he can't quite process her sentence. And then two things happen at once. His brain produces a very explicit memory of her naked with her legs around his shoulders that first night and he tugs her back into their row to let a flight attendant pass. She's flush up against him and so pink he can feel the heat of her embarrassed arousal and all of his blood rushes to a very specific part of his body.

Now that his hands have curled around her forearms, he can't stop running them up and down, feeling the softness of her skin. He manages words somehow, even if they come out as more of a growl. “Poor jealous Felicity, didn't they invite you?”

“Um, Sara did. But we both knew it wasn't - I was hoping - I mean….” She closes her eyes and takes a shuddering breath. When she opens them again he can see the decision she's made. “You know what, why don't we, uh, finish this conversation over serum and wine. My place. Now?”

Her voice goes a bit breathy at the end when his thumbs stray closer to the side of her breasts, and yeah, he needs privacy _now_.

“Yes. _Please_.”

He keeps touching her the entire cab ride, nothing the driver would notice, but the two of them are so sensitized that his thumb on her wrist has her eyes glazing over.

And it probably doesn't help that he keeps a running commentary going in her ear.

“I figured out pretty early on that thinking of sex blocked my father out completely, so I started imaging you and me, and all the things we haven't done yet.”

“That's - that's a long list,” she manages, arching her neck so his fingers have better access to her soft pulse point.

“It's a very long list.”

“We’d better, ah, get started soon, then.”

He smiles into her hair as she pays the cab driver. Then she’s tugging him up the stairs and fumbling for her keys. When she turns around with a triumphant grin, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, this reincarnation crap isn’t a complete disaster.

 


End file.
